Tuesday, September 19, 2017

The popular cleaning utility Ccleaner (originally owned
by Piriform) was recently bought out by Avast and it appears a certain build of
the software has been compromised with some Malware. Ccleaner is normally used
to clean out temp files and the Windows registry etc. but this specific build
does way more than that.

The version in question was released between August 15th
and September 11th and the ones you have to worry about are the Windows build
that has a version number of 5.33.6162 and the Cloud build that has a version
number of 1.07.3191. Piriform says that the reason for the hack was probably to
stage a future botnet attack on an outside target which would turn your computer
into part of a group of computers making some kind of attack.

The threat has been removed from the software so you
should check your current version and if it’s one of the ones listed above
uninstall it and go out and get the latest version from the Piriform website.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

If you are an Apple user and thought your computer was immune from viruses and spyware then think again. There is some new malware making the rounds that can infect your Mac OS based computer and do things such as steal your credentials and display fake banking sites and it’s really hard to remove.

This malware is called OSX/Dok and it was discovered earlier this year and it disables security updates and redirects attempts to reach Apples antivirus servers back to the local computer. It can also tell when you are trying to go to your banking site and redirect you to a fake one somewhere else. Once you sign into this fake site your credentials are stolen and it uses your location to determine how it attacks your computer.

Apple uses a program called GateKeeper that is designed to prevent installations of unsigned applications by attaching fake certificates to the malware. Apple is trying to revoke these certificates but there are so many that it’s hard to keep up.

The malware is being distributed by phishing emails that try to fool you into believing you have some sort of tax or financial situation that needs to be taken care of immediately. There will be a zip file attached to the message and once its opened then the infection begins. OSX/Dok is hard to detect and get rid of and for now Apple doesn’t have a security patch so time will tell how bad the infections get.

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Normally when you think of Windows 10 you associate it with
your home computer and have your Windows 7 Pro version taking care of business
at the office. In the old days of Windows there was Windows Server and Windows
Workstation which implied that the Workstation version was made to be at your
desk at work.

Last week Microsoft accidentally released a version to
testers described as ““Windows 10 Pro for Workstation” which has some advanced features that are more
suitable to power users and higher horsepower PCs and can support up to 4 CPUs
and up to 6TB of RAM.

Other features include support for Microsoft’s Resilient
file system (ReFS) which offers fault tolerance and support for larger
volumes.Also included is the SMBDirect
protocol which is used for file sharing and high throughput, low latency, and
low CPU usage when connecting to network shares.

This new version might be the determining factor for
companies to make the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 since it looks like
it will offer some nice enhancements for those who need a more powerful
operating system on more heavy duty hardware to get the job done.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

If you don’t know already, Microsoft has the tendency to try
and force Windows users to upgrade to the “latest and greatest” version of
their operating system. Of course this is understandable but when they force it
upon you without your permission or try to sneak it onto your computer during
an update then that’s going a little too far.

You might remember the recent issues end users were having
with Windows 10 being installed on their computers without them knowing or
without them approving the upgrade. If you are a power user then you most
likely would have caught the attempts and would have been able to stop them but
for the average user things ended up working out a little differently. Many
people ended up with partial installations or upgrades that didn’t successfully
install causing lost files and unusable computers.

Now there is a group of people who have started a lawsuit
claiming these Windows 10 upgrades caused data loss and damage to their
computers causing the individuals to lose valuable time and money and in some
cases having to buy a new computer or hire professional help to get them going
again. So far there are 3 people involved in the lawsuit but a group of lawyers
are getting involved to start a class action lawsuit aimed at Microsoft on
behalf of potentially hundreds of thousands of people affected by the upgrade.

Microsoft has responded saying there were multiple warnings
and alerts related to the upgrades and that users had the option not to upgrade
during the free upgrade time period. But in their defense these warnings were
not clear for the average computer user. Microsoft also says that there is a
rollback option to revert back to your previous operating system version but
there were many users who had issues trying to do that as well.